Page 7 of Hot Streak

It was only instinct that made him put out his hand and catch the ball that Jackson tossed at him.

His fingers clenched around it.

“Come on, rook,” Jackson cajoled. “Show me I’m wrong. Hit me. Hit me.”

Suddenly slippery with sweat, his fingers slid across the leather surface of the ball.

“You’re fucking crazy,” he said.

“Hey, you started it,” Jackson retorted. “If you’re so great, you should be able to hit me no problem.”

He should.

But the longer they stood there, Jackson facing off against him like it was nothing, like Connor couldn’t do some serious damage, the more he wasn’t sure.

More people had joined TJ and Ro by the door. They were all looking on, some interested, some doubtful.

Nobody was worried.

Only Connor.

He threw the ball.

Jackson didn’t even blink.

Too many years as a catcher, Connor thought rebelliously, but the truth was he didn’t have to, because the ball sailed right by him, not even coming close to hitting him, and hit the window next to him instead, shattering it in a burst of glass.

“Shit,” Connor muttered. Humiliation surged through him in a sickening wave.

The dismissal in Jackson’s eyes was blunt. “Guess you might need me after all,” Jackson said. “Rule number one, stop thinking.”

And he turned and walked away, down the street.

Connor didn’t know which part stung more: Jackson’s dismissal or that he’d been right.

“Come on, Connor. You better see Millie about the broken window,” TJ said, and he went, because it was easier to do that than to keep staring down the street, feeling that little jolt of annoyance and frustration every time Jackson passed under a streetlight.

Chapter 2

“He’s hopeless,” Jackson said as he barged into Mikey’s office.

The manager looked up, a frown creasing his features. “What?”

“Connor. He’s fucking hopeless,” Jackson said, throwing himself into the chair kitty-corner to the desk, nearly completely buried under with papers and candy wrappers.

“I take it you met him,” Mikey said carefully.

It had taken two miles of a roundabout walk home and several sets of pushups and a brutal round of ab work for Jackson to feel calm enough to sleep after the confrontation with Connor.

He hadn’t let Connor see the temper boiling away inside him, because it had been way too fucking clear that one of them had to keep thinking, and obviously, that was not going to be Connor.

“He’s goin’ places. You know he is.”

“He sure thinks so,” Jackson retorted. He’d met plenty of egos in this game. It was impossible not to, not when some of these guys had been coddled practically since birth, raised to think they were a blessing every time they stepped onto the fucking field. They wouldn’t know a misstep if it hit them upside the head.

Connor was one of those. Times a hundred.

“Yeah, he’s got a big head. But can you blame him? He could go all the way, and he knows it.”

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